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Best Kept Internet Marketing Strategies Secrets

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One of the best kept internet marketing strategies is cross promotion and one of the best ways to illustrate this best kept internet marketing strategy secret is to illustrate it  in a case study.

The basics of cross promotion are really quite simple. First, you determine your target audience. In this case study, the company in the spotlight is iThemes, founded by Cory Miller.

Cory’s company sells WordPress Themes to bloggers. A WordPress Theme allows a blog owner to quickly and easily change the appearance of a blog with the click of a mouse. To make something that EASY for the user takes a LOT of work behind the scenes.

Now, you might be wondering why ANYONE would PAY for a WordPress theme when there are hundreds of thousands of FREE WordPress Themes floating around.

Remember when I said that to make something easy takes a lot of behind the scenes work – well, a lot of times those “free” themes are full of “bugs”. Some of those “bugs” will make it so the theme doesn’t display properly. I had a case with one free theme where the pages wouldn’t display properly. The client loved the look, but the code was such a mess it wasn’t usable. There are other cases where the “bugs” on those free themes means an outbound link from your blog to a blog in a less than desirable neighborhood on the internet.

After a typical blogger tires of fighting the good fight of trying to find a well coded, non-spam free theme, the next logical step is to is to move into the realm of PAID themes a.k.a PREMIUM themes.

This is the arena within which iThemes competes.

So, iThemes target customer is someone who is already a blogger. In many cases, they’re bloggers who have done the free theme route and are ready to make an small financial investment in their blog. (All of iThemes single use themes cost less than $100 which makes them very affordable.)  Most of these customers are familiar with the concept of FTP AND the basics of blogging.

The best kept internet marketing strategies secret for iThemes is to cross promote their business with a popular blog that writes about issues related to blogging.

This is the point where most people will stop reading and run off to find a blog to use for a cross promotion strategy.  This is the virtual equivalent of a small child running into heavy traffic.

STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!!!

This best kept internet marketing strategy is not quite that simple. If it were, then THIS wouldn’t be a BEST KEPT internet marketing strategies secret.  Here’s the SECRET part of the equation – and Daniel over at Daily Blog Tips delivers the secret in his post Drop A Comment if You Want to Win an iThemes Premium Theme

Pretty much every week someone emails me to offer some kind of free product or service. Most of the times, however, you can see that it is a blatant promotional effort, where the other side is just interested in getting some exposure for his stuff. On those cases I just ignore it. (emphasis is mine)

Sometimes, however, the freebies do have a good value for my readers, and on those occasions I am glad to cover them.

Did you catch that?   He told you the best kept internet marketing strategy secret of all time.  Did you see it?  It’s right there in the last line in the quote above,

Sometimes, however, the freebies do have a good value for my readers, and on those occasions I am glad to cover them.

Daniel knows his readers.   He knows who they are and what the need from him.  That’s why his blog is so successful.   (If you don’t know who yours are or who you want them to be, then pick up a copy of the 8 Week Power Blog Launch)  Daniel’s readers are ESTABLISHED bloggers seeking information on promoting and improving their blogs.

The secret is, when someone contacts him with a win/win/win proposition, Daniel – like every other successful blogger- is happy to oblige. In this case, offering a free WordPress iThemes theme is truly a win/win/win situation.

  • Daniel wins – he’s decided to use the freebie to increase comments on his blog post.
  • Daniel’s readers win – they get a chance to win a free premium  theme which is something many of them want.
  • Cory wins – Daniel’s readers have to say WHICH iThemes theme they want to win.  In order to do so, they must VISIT THE iThemes SITE!!!  They visit the site, see the tasty selection of beautiful themes and are asked to “fall in love” with one and post that preference within their comment.

Oh, Daniel and Cory both score additional “wins” on this promotion.  Cory wins AGAIn in the fact that not everyone who comments will be a lucky winner. Those who aren’t lucky winners are now classified as “hot prospects”.

Daniel wins again as well -because when new readers find this post after the promotion is over, they are likely to subscribe to the RSS so they’re sure to be ready for the next big give away!  So promotions like these help to build Daniel’s blog and help him attract new readers.   Oh, and Daniel wins a THIRD time on this -because other bloggers – like me – will write about his brilliant internet marketing strategy, which means more incoming links.

So the best kept internet marketing strategy secret begins with knowing your target customer.  Once you know who your target customer is, then you can find win/win/win cross promotional opportunities for your product or service.

It’s Like Christmas in September: Building Trust Through Blogging

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It’s like Christmas morning here today – except it’s the kind of Christmas morning where all your presents are from sadistic narcissists.  When spending the holidays with sadistic narcissistic relatives, you don’t make any sudden moves, you make sure not to take your eyes off of your valuables (or relatives) and most importantly, you don’t have high expectations of what is contained within the packages addressed to you.

My first “present” to arrive today was an actual old fashioned CHAIN LETTER via snail mail! A real live CHAIN LETTER! I mean, I’d heard about chain letters when I was a kid but to actually receive one in my mail box at the end of my driveway – well I just never imagined it would happen to me!

I knew there was something fishy about the letter. It was addressed to my husband, but the return address was of someone I don’t know. Could it be that my husband has another family in Kansas? Perhaps he has a secret identity? As I began to open the mystery letter, a thought flashed through my mind- “Nobody sends anthrax through the mail anymore, do they?” I held my breath as I carefully opened the letter.

Turns out my husband isn’t a spy nor is he leading a double life.  So much for my drama fix for the day.  The envelope contained 4 pages sloppily stapled together.  It lead with, “I’m a retired attorney, so you can trust me.”

I haven’t laughed that hard in YEARS!

When I was able to stand upright again – I wiped the tears from my eyes and kept reading.  The gist of the letter is that you send $1 to each of the 6 names on the list with the request to “ADD ME TO YOUR LIST”.  By paying $1 to add your name to the list, it’s not illegal – according to the letter.  Why would he lie?  After all, he’s a trusted retired attorney!

They say laughter is the best medicine and I’m about to overdose!

It’s official.  The scammers are leaving the internet and going back to snail mail.  WHEW!  I knew if we all kept ignoring those spam emails that eventually they’d leave.  (By the way, the 30% of you who CLICK are encouraging them to stay!!!)

It wouldn’t be Christmas with just one present, so I then went to my email and got a message from a client.

“Is this legitimate and/or do you know anything about this?”

The attached email is typical.

Would you like to earn auto-pilot commissions every time you post to your blog? And at the same time use the Power of Twitter to drive massive amounts of traffic to your blog.

Notice the key elements in this pitch:

  • auto-pilot – aka get something for nothing
  • the power of Twitter – a “magic” program you’ve heard lots about but probably aren’t using
  • massive amounts of traffic- because all you need for your blog to succeed is massive traffic.

Why is it that every one of these programs begins with

“Here’s a no fail, no learning required, minimal time and effort on your part way to achieve massive traffic to your blog!”

Unfortunately, it’s human nature.

I told my client I’d check it out for her and I learned a lot.

First, I didn’t know that the Butterfly Marketing stuff was still being used.  The whole “OTO” thing is a thing of beauty.   It’s a great way to automate the “impending doom” close on the web.   However, when you’ve been burned before, you usually aren’t anxious to put your hand on the stove again.

Here’s the deal for those of you who don’t know the “system” behind Butterfly Marketing.

Offer an attractive free resource via a squeeze page.  (Squeeze page:  where there are only two options – sign up or leave.  You don’t let them “learn more” by surfing the site – they either want the freebie or they don’t.)

Then, when visitors sign up to receive the free resource, they are taken to a page that offers you a ONE TIME OFFER (OTO).  The page is programmed to display only once, so if they click away, they are “robbed” of the opportunity to purchase this amazing product/service.

In this case, they’re selling you a program to create WordPress plug ins even if you know nothing about coding.  You may not know PHP from CSS, but with this system you can create your own WordPress plug in.

Once the sucker – ahem, buyer has clicked away from that appealing offer, you offer another resource – again letting them know that this offer will go away just like the last one did.

“Aren’t you sorry you let the last one go?  If you’re smart, you’ll jump on this chance.”

They’re serious.  They want your money.  Buy something NOW!

If you’re a total tightwad, you’ll say no again because by now all you want is to get to the free resource you were promised.

VIOLA!  You arrive.  It’s a pretty stark page though.  The most prominent feature of the page is that you are offered an opportunity to earn AFFILIATE COMMISSIONS if you’ll promote this program to your friends, family and website visitors. Just because you were too smart to buy doesn’t mean your chump friends and family won’t.

Oh, and there’s your promised freebie – a WordPress plug in that will automatically “tweet” your Twitter account.  I’ve got to confess, at this point, I’m worried about installing this on a blog I care about.  These people haven’t done ANYTHING to gain my trust.  Am I jeapordizing my blog AND my twitter account by using this?

We live in a world where it’s hard to TRUST anyone these days.  The other morning, I was listening to a local radio show where they were talking about a video they saw on YouTube.  The topic of discussion – was the video “real”.  Despite video evidence, they were still unsure whether or not this phenomemnon was true.

We live in a world where you can’t believe your eyes or your ears.  The Bejing Olympics was full of fakes – from fireworks to birth certificates.  If you live in the US, you’re being bombarded by political propaganda disguised as “news”.  What’s real?  What’s fake?  What can you trust?

One of the drums I pound frequently here is that your blog is a GREAT way to build trust with potential clients and customers.  It’s hard to “fake” your expertise over the course of a few hundred blog posts.

How do you use your blog to create trust with your readers?

New Business Development Process

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I have been having new business development process issues coming up in consultations with clients lately so that’s usually a sign that I should write about it here.  This morning I saw that other blogs were talking about the new business development process, so this issue is obviously “bubbling up”for other people as well and not just my clients.

Mark over at Court’s Internet Marketing School leads the parade with his post, Money Always Flows to the Solution.

What problem does your website solve for its users?

Does the answer to that question fly off your lips? Did you have to think about it? Can you answer it even after thinking about it?

How about this – fill in the blanks in the following statement:

“I give my users _________ and I get ________ in return.”

In a few lines, Mark hits the nail on the head. His post kinda makes me embarrassed that I devoted an entire book to that very subject.  (Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results)

Then Naomi Dunford over at Itty Biz tells why this is a GREAT time to start your home based business.

Sell the right thing. Sell it to the right people. Hit the right trigger buttons. Do those things and you’ll be the richest person you know.

Ah – there’s the rub!  Sell the right thing.

Last week I told 2 different people to come back and talk to me when they have something to sell.  Their enthusiasm is high but they don’t have a product or a structured service to offer.  In essences, they couldn’t fill out Mark’s fill in the blank statement above.  It’s not just websites that have to fill in the blanks in the statement below, it’s a burning question for business owners as well:

“I give my users _________ and I get ________ in return.”

That is the hard part.  Developing a systematic way to fill in those two blanks in that sentence.

I’ve worked with small business owners for over a decade now on filling in those blanks.  I had one client who offers nutritional coaching services.  Her business wasn’t growing like she knew it could, so she and I spent three months working on her business model.  She had the generalities in place -she could fill in the blanks with the basics, ” I give my clients nutritional information and I get money in return.” However, she was a bit fuzzy on the process – something that she wasn’t clear on until we began working together.

Her business positively EXPLODED after we created a road map so to speak of her process.   We set up a “step one, step two, step three, step four” in her coaching process.  Even though she knew those steps in her head, it was positively AMAZING how quickly her business grew once she was able to outline for her potential clients the process.  In other words, she created a LABEL for the process – “A Four Step Process to Better Health” which helped her prospective clients wrap their brains around the service she provides.  As a result, her practice filled to over flowing, drawing clients to her Michigan based practice from as far away as Japan.

Lately, when I’ve been getting “HELP ME!” emails, I’m seeing a common thread.  People want to break free from the bondage of their 9-5 job and they’re desperate to break free.   That’s great and I agree with Naomi – there’s no better time than now to do so.  However, you have to be able to fill in the blanks if you want to make money – either online or off line.  The common thread is the desire to break free is there – but there isn’t a product or service to back desire up.  They can’t fill in the blanks in Mark’s statement –

“I give my users _________ and I get ________ in return.”

Skellie over at Problogger.net offers 10 innovative blog business models which can serve as inspiration for the ways others have created products and services which they use their blog to promote.

Developing a product can be as simple as creating an ebook or a membership site.   However, sometimes that’s easier said than done.

What product or service do you sell with your blog?  What process did you go through to create that product or service?

The Moral to the Story – Keep Your WordPress Installation Up to Date.

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For those of you who don’t know how I pay the bills around here, I have this “savior” complex where in I try to save people from themselves.  While others hold their sides as they roll on the floor laughing at the idiots on YouTube who subject themselves to groin shots, I grimace in empathy.

As part of this complex, I launched a service known as Acumen Web Services where I sell self hosted  WordPress blogs to business people who are not geeks yet want to harness the power of the internet in their marketing.  At Acumen Web Services, I have a service known as “Cyber Angel” hosting.  This means that I’ll be responsible for keeping your WordPress blog up to date as part of your hosting with me.

I offer “Cyber Angel” hosting because I’ve watched clients take groin shot after groin shot  over the years and I don’t enjoy it one bit.

Here’s a word of advice:  If your web site is getting nice search engine action, BELIEVE ME the bad guys are hard at work finding a way to grab a piece of your hard earned success.

That’s what is happening with WordPress blogs.  Average, every day people are getting incredible results using WordPress self hosted blogs as their web presence.  Because of that success, there are bad guys (and gals) out there who are always looking for a way to siphon success from these hard working WordPress blogs.

As a result, the WordPress development team is always trying to keep one step ahead of the bad guys.  It’s a labor of love and it upsets me when people complain about the frequent updates.  They’re doing it for YOUR own good folks!

So, updating WordPress is essential.  If it’s too much for you, then get a free blog or hire someone to take care of YOUR self hosted WordPress blog for you.

As you might imagine, I’ve had more than one person throw a fuss over the monthly hosting fee which comes with “Cyber Angel” hosting.   Most are surprised at how QUICKLY I agree to doing it “their” way.  However, for some reason, the ones who ask “Why?” usually end up signing up quickly for the service.  The rest  have gotten exactly what they requested.   I am MORE than willing to set up self hosted WordPress blogs on regular web hosting account, however it comes with the explicit warning that it is the CLIENT’S responsibility to keep the blog installation up to date.

So this morning, I get an email from one of those clients.  At the time of installation, he was all “Scouts honor!  I promise to stay on top of this!”  His last blog post was August 2007.   Unfortunately, while he may have forgotten about his blog, the search engines haven’t.  He wrote a couple of posts which have obviously done VERY well for themselves with the search engines.  Remember, there are always people willing and able to siphon your success!!!  He’s not only not been posting to the blog, he hasn’t stayed on top of the installation issues.

Now he has a problem – a SERIOUS problem.  Seems he’s been getting email messages from unhappy campers as a result of his blog.  They go like this:

To Whom It May Concern:

I am tired of receiving messages containing malicious computer programs (viruses) from your e-mail address!!!

If within 1-2 days you do not stop sending messages to my e-mail address, I will have to address this issue to the Police!…

Today I received a hard copy of your data logs from my Internet service provider. The copy contains your IP address, logs of sending malicious programs and your e-mail address details…
I am sending you the copy of the document containing your data and logs of sending malicious programs as the proof of your fault!!!!!!

You must print the document containing the list of your data and logs of sending malicious programs and pass it on to your Internet service provider with, so that they could find out why the viruses are sent from your computer to my e-mail address!!!!

Ask your Internet service provider to resolve this problem!!!!

Do this now!!!

Once again!!! If you don’t stop sending the letters, I will address to the Police and file a lawsuit against you!!!

I went in and checked and by gum he is running an old version of WordPress.  Go figure.  I quoted him on what it’s going to take to “fix” the problem.

By the way, I can’t imagine that this is helping his company’s “brand” or image in any way, shape or form.  While I’m sure the frustrated sender of the email above will NEVER forget my client’s company (which has been featured in the email address of each and every spam message being sent)  it won’t be a good thing.

If you’re not running WordPress 2.6. X UPGRADE NOW!

The Power of Positive Thinking & Positive People

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I’m having a terrible time recovering from last Tuesday’s dental surgery.  I was truly the epitome of positive thinking prior to the extraction of my wisdom teeth.  I wasn’t worrying about it – I wasn’t expecting it to be awful.  Maybe I thought the power of positive thinking would replace the need to take antibiotics post surgery.  Maybe I thought positive people don’t experience negative consequences.  Maybe I’m an idiot.

Let’s just say that by Friday, the need for antibiotics and painkillers was PAINFULLY obvious!!!  The right side of my face is now a top contender for a Michael Douglas look alike contest!

It’s funny how things work – because I can’t say I was feeling amazingly positive when I sat down to my computer.  Then, I was greeted with Cath Lawson’s How To Attract Amazingly Positive People post. That was followed by opening an email from a friend on the power of positive thinking.

There were two farmers: a positive farmer and a negative farmer. Whenever it would rain the positive farmer would say, “Thank goodness for the rain – now we don’t even have to water the crops.”

The negative farmer would say, “If this keeps up it will rot their roots and we won’t have any crops to harvest”

The sun would come out and the positive farmer would say, “Thank goodness for the sunshine. Now our crops are getting the vitamins and minerals they really need.”

The negative farmer would say, “If this keeps up it will scorch them and we won’t be able to make a living.”

One day they went hunting together and the positive farmer brought along his new bird dog.

Once they were out in the middle of a lake in a boat, the positive farmer took aim and shot a bird. He then turned to the negative farmer and said, “Watch this.”

The bird dog jumped out of the boat and miraculously ran on top of the water, picked up the bird, turned around and ran back to the boat on top of the water, before setting the bird perfectly in the boat in front of the positive farmer.

The positive farmer looked at the negative farmer and asked, “What do you think?”

The negative farmer shook his head and said, “Just as I thought, that dog can’t even swim.”

It’s up to you today whether you want to be the positive farmer or the negative farmer. You will have that choice. It is up to you what you will get out of life. Like your life and your business – you will only get out of it what you put into it.

They say that lack of fear isn’t courage, it’s insanity. I think the same is true of positive thinking.  There’s a difference between purely positive thinking and insanity.

I like to think my life motto is “expect the best, prepare for the worst”.  In my case, my expectation for the best meant I failed to prepare for the worst.  My failure to prepare for the worst ultimately brought about the worst case scenario.